Facebook is making a series of design tweaks to Live. Here’s why.

This week, Facebook is quietly deploying a few major changes to a product that’s becoming increasingly prevalent in the way news is reported: Facebook Live.

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Now, Live videos can go full screen and free of comments on mobile, rather than being presented alongside the comment feed. Both broadcasters and viewers will have the option to disable emoticons and comments during live streams, in what Facebook calls “video only” mode. Meanwhile, videos can now last for up to four hours, instead of the old maximum of 90 minutes.

While this is not the new interface, new options will allow similar full-screen video in portrait and landscape modes with no reactions, as seen here.

In short, Facebook Live is starting to looking less like a streaming service full of endless user commentary–and a lot more like the full-screen experience of conventional television.

New interface: Broadcasters will be able to disable the reactions and comments seen here.

While Facebook declined to comment on the design changes, it’s easy to theorize why they’re coming now. These changes pave the way for Facebook to rebuild itself as a channel-surfing TV experience to rival your Comcast subscription (if it ever wanted to). And coupled with extended broadcast times, it opens the doors for Facebook Live to document more major events as they unfold. Any broadcast can become its own mini C-SPAN, with larger and longer videos to entice us all to watch more. Given that C-SPAN actually streamed using Periscope during the Democratic sit-in, that’s not such a crazy possibility.

With its new version of Facebook Live, Facebook seems to be embracing another side of itself: One where the media is first and the social is second. Videos may be filmed by the people, but that doesn’t mean they’ll instantly be buried in the opinions of other users. Maybe when we start talking less, we’ll listen more.

About the author

Mark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company. He started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day.